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Sshh, minister tells muezzins, you’ll wake the tourists

A MOROCCAN minister has provoked uproar by suggesting that, to avoid waking tourists, muezzins should make less noise when calling the faithful to prayer at dawn.

Nouzha Skalli, the 57-year-old family minister, called for a cut in the volume of loudspeakers amplifying the chant of the muezzins. She also suggested that the call to prayer, a daily ritual all over the Muslim world, be truncated.

Radical Islamists have mounted a noisy campaign against her, some of them challenging her right to a government job, given that she is a woman.

“This minister is determined to attack Muslims and Islam,” said Sidi Sliman, an imam.

Others have praised her initiative, arguing that children suffer as much as tourists from being woken at dawn by the muezzins.

Skalli, a well-known feminist, dismissed the fuss as a “hateful campaign by people irritated by my fight for women’s rights”. She went on: “They are